Graham Finlayson is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of East Anglia. He joined UEA in 1999 when he was awarded a full professorship at the age of 30. He was and remains the youngest ever professorial appointment at that institution. Graham trained in computer science first at the University of Strathclyde and then for his masters and doctoral degrees at Simon Fraser University where he was  awarded a ‘Dean’s medal’ for the best PhD dissertation in his faculty. Prior to joining UEA, Graham was a lecturer at the University of York and then a founder and Reader at the Colour and Imaging Institute at the University of Derby. Professor Finlayson is interested in ‘Computing how we see’ and his research spans computer science (algorithms), engineering (embedded systems) and psychophysics (visual perception).

He has published over 50 journal, over 200 referred conference papers and 25+ patents. He has won best paper prizes at several conferences including, “The 5th IS&T conference on Colour in Graphics, Imaging and Vision” (2010) and “the IEE conference on Visual Information Engineering” (1995). Many of Graham’s patents are implemented and used in commercial products including photo processing software, dedicated image processing hardware (ASICs) and in embedded camera software. Graham’s research is funded from a number of sources including government, industry and through investment for spin-out companies. Industrial partners include Apple, Hewlett Packard, Sony, Xerox, Unilever and Buhler-Sortex. Significantly, Graham was the first academic at UEA (in its 50 year history) to either raise venture capital investment for a spin-out company – Imsense Ltd developed technology to make pictures look better - or  to make a money for the university when this company was subsequently sold to  a blue chip industry major in 2010.

In 2002, Graham was awarded the Philip Leverhulme prize for science and in 2008 a Royal Society-Wolfson Merit award. In 2009 the Royal Photographic Society presented graham with the Davies medal in recognition of his contributions to the Photographic Industry. The RPS made Graham a fellow in 2012. In recognition of distinguished service to the Society for Imaging Science and Technology, Graham was elected a fellow of that society in 2010. In January 2013 Graham was also elected to a fellowship of the Institute of Engineering Technology.

Prof. Graham Finlayson's CV (PDF, 147Kb)
Illuminant Estimation: Back to the Future (PDF, 6.49MB)

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• Philip Leverhume prize for Science, 2003-2005 (£50000).
• Associate Editor, IEEE Trans. PAMI 2005
• General Chair Colour Imaging Conference, 2001
• Funded lectures: Image Processing, Sweden, 2001, 1st conference in Graphics, Imaging and Vision, Poitiers, France, 2002. The Gjovik Colour Conference, Norway, 2005
• Visiting Researcher, Computing Science, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver CANADA (yearly)
• Visiting Researcher, Ecole Polytechnic Federale Lausanne, summer 2008
• IEEE Workshop on color and photometric methods in computer vision (Program Chair, International Computer Vision, 2003)
• Keynote Speech, Conference of the Color Association of Taiwan, 2007
• Keynote Speech, Norwegian Color Conference, 2005
• Keynote Speech, Swedish Conference on Image Processing, 2001
• Chief Technical Officer, Im-Sense Ltd. Incorporated 2006
• Board member for IS&T (Society for Imaging Science and Technology)

Graham's research interests include:

• colour imaging
• computer vision
• colour science
• artificial intelligence
• computational geometry 

Selected Publications

Finlayson, G. D., Hordley, S. D., Drew, M. S. and Lu, C., On the removal of shadows from images. IEEE transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, Volume 28, Number 1, Page(s) 59-68, 2006.

Finlayson, G. D. and Morovic, P. M., Metamer Sets. Journal of the optical Society of America A, Volume 22, Issue 5, Page(s) 810-819, 2005.

Drew, M. S. and Finlayson, G. D., Multispectral processing without spectra. Journal of the Optical Society of America A, Volume 20, Issue 7, Page(s) 1181-1193, 2003.

Finlayson, G. D. and Hordley, S. D., Color constancy at a pixel. Journal of the Optical Society of America a-Optics Image Science and Vision, Volume 18, Issue 2, Page(s) 253-264, 2001.

Guest Lectures/Invited Speaker [PDF, 10KB]